Since the introduction of the Google search engine, quality has been enormously important to the Google team. AdWords began with a goal to pair well-targeted ads with our powerfully relevant search results. So we built the AdWords system to reward and promote the most effective and well-targeted ads within our system. This helps maintain, or even increase, the value of an AdWords ad to both advertisers and users.

What is a high quality ad?

A high quality ad uses relevant ad text and keywords and links to the most relevant landing page possible. This type of ad is more effective for advertisers and more relevant for our users. For example, if an ad for a real estate broker's business uses the keyword house, this keyword may be too general, and therefore not very relevant for users. There are many potential searches where users may include the keyword house and the user doesn't want to find a real estate brokerage firm, such as: rent house Hawaii, house décor, house renovations, etc. A high quality ad uses keywords intended to target those most interested in the business or service advertised, such as: buy house New York, sell house Madrid, real estate California, etc.

How we include quality evaluations in our pricing.

We've found that the best way to maintain our goal is to build quality evaluations into AdWords pricing. We currently use quality-based minimum bids to encourage high quality ads for search by charging higher quality ads a lower minimum cost-per-click bid (CPC bid) to enter our ad auction. We also charge a higher minimum CPC bid for lower quality ads to enter the auction.

This focus on quality works to keep costs low for our advertisers, encouraging them to create high quality ad campaigns for their business or service. This in turn encourages users to click on our ads more often, and this keeps both advertisers and users happy with AdWords ads. We want to help you find your best-case AdWords scenario: An ad campaign within your budget with lower average CPCs, high clickthrough rates, and a strong return on investment.

Learn more about our overall philosophy for the AdWords program.

Learn about how our quality philosophy works with the AdWords system.